The office of the Uganda Human Rights Commission in Lira has intervened in a conflict between residents of Bar sub-county and some police officers.
The Bar residents, led by their LC3 chairperson Tom Aya, petitioned the Civil-Military Cooperation Center at the Human Rights Commission claiming that police officers were taking the law into their own hands. They said a group of police officers were accepting bribes from people accused of capital offenses and were actively hampering the course of justice, particularly in relation to cases of child defilement, rape and theft.
Tom Okello, a police officer working at the Lira Civil Military Cooperation Centre, says the Human Rights Commission convened an urgent meeting to resolve the conflict. He says both the public and the police were given an opportunity to present their cases in an attempt to arrive at a peaceful end to the clash.
//Cue in: iThere was a public outcry #i
Cue out: i# any complaint again.i//
Okello says that although the center was initially intended to settle grievances between the military and the civilians, it is extending its scope to address reconciliation issues among the population in Lira that was scarred by nearly 20 years of war.
